In the era of globalization, translation of information especially in such a volatile market as finance and banking, plays a vital role in the development of each country. Nevertheless, there has been restricted number of researches focusing on translation of this field. Hence, the research was carried out for the purpose of revealing translation procedures, methods and strategies applied in translating finance and banking news. Fifteen pieces of news in English and their translated versions in Vietnamese collected from prestigious sources of news served as samples. They were carefully analyzed in the light of Newmark (1988)’s theory of translation procedures and methods at three levels: word, sentence and text respectively. The findings show that shift translation and through translation were among the most frequently used procedures at word level. Translation strategies at sentence level involved passive to active voice converting, shift translation and sentence splitting. Headlines, special parts of articles were chiefly translated by communicative method. Likewise, text was translated communicatively as a whole. It is suggested that translators should master the translation procedures and methods and flexibly utilize them appropriately to the readers. Moreover, regularly updating information about finance and banking news and the global economy is also highly recommended for better translation.
Trang 1In the era of globalization, translation of information especially in such a volatile market as finance and banking, plays a vital role in the development of each country Nevertheless, there has been restricted number of researches focusing on translation of this field Hence, the research was carried out for the purpose of revealing translation procedures, methods and strategies applied in translating finance and banking news
Fifteen pieces of news in English and their translated versions in Vietnamese collected from prestigious sources of news served as samples They were carefully analyzed in the light of Newmark (1988)’s theory of translation procedures and methods at three levels: word, sentence and text respectively The findings show that shift translation and through translation were among the most frequently used procedures at word level Translation strategies at sentence level involved passive to active voice converting, shift translation and sentence splitting Headlines, special parts
of articles were chiefly translated by communicative method Likewise, text was translated communicatively as a whole It is suggested that translators should master the translation procedures and methods and flexibly utilize them appropriately to the readers Moreover, regularly updating information about finance and banking news and
the global economy is also highly recommended for better translation.
Trang 2TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT i
List of figures iv
List of abbreviations v
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Rationale 1
1.2 Significance of the study 2
1.3 Aims of the study 2
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4
2.1 Translation 4
2.1.1 Definition of translation 4
2.1.2 Translation Methods 4
2.1.3 Translation procedures 7
2.2 News 8
2.2.1 Definition of news 8
2.2.2 Types of news 9
2.3 Business news, finance and banking news 11
2.3.1 Business news 11
2.3.2 Finance and banking news 11
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 13
3.1 Sampling 13
3.2 Data analysis instruments 13
Trang 33.3 Data analysis procedure 14
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 15
4.1 Translation procedures at word-level 15
4.1.1 Translation procedures for translating Finance and banking terminology 15
4.1.2 Translation procedures for translating proper names 19
4.1.3 Translation procedures for translating acronyms 22
4.2 Translation strategies at sentence-level 23
4.3 Translation methods for translating news headlines 25
4.4 Translation methods at text-level 29
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 37
5.1 Summary of the study 37
5.2 Implications of the study 38
5.3 Strengths and weaknesses of the study 40
5.4 Suggestion for further studies 41
REFERENCES 42
APPENDIX A - DATA 44
APPENDIXES B – NEWS SAMPLES 56
Sample 1 - A Commission for the Fed's Next 100 Years 56
The central bank's centennial offers a valuable opportunity to rethink its mandate 56
By SETH LIPSKY 56
Sample 3 - Goldman Sachs Raises $1 Billion Selling Stake in ICBC 60
Shares Drop 61
Sample 4 - Rush to ATMs in Cyprus on EU bailout tax 62
Trang 4A planned tax on Cyprus bank depositors as part of a European Union bailout is sending people rushing to ATMs to withdraw cash 62
Sample 5 - CORRECTED-Fitch says top 29 banks may need $566 bln 64
Thượng nghị sĩ Kevin Brady đang đề xuất bỏ bớt 1 chức năng của Fed đồng thời lập ra 1 ủy ban giám sát hoạt động của cơ quan này .65
Sample 2 - Các ngân hàng châu Âu đối mặt với gia tăng minh bạch 68
Các "ông lớn" ngân hàng đang phải đối mặt với mối đe dọa của việc công khai thuế và lợi nhuận tại các nước trong Liên minh châu Âu 68
Sample 3 - Goldman Sachs muốn thoái vốn khỏi ngân hàng Trung Quốc 69
Đại gia tài chính Mỹ đang rao bán 1 tỷ USD cổ phiếu của Ngân hàng Công Thương Trung Quốc (ICBC) Trước đó, Goldman Sachs cùng các quỹ đã bốn lần bán cổ phiếu ICBC và thu về tổng cộng 7,76 tỷ USD 69
Sample 4 - Dân Síp ồ ạt rút tiền khỏi ngân hàng 70
Kế hoạch đánh thuế tiền gửi 9,9% áp dụng từ ngày mai là lý do khiến người dân Cộng hòa Síp kéo nhau tới ATM để rút tiền .70
Sample 5 - Các ngân hàng cần 566 tỷ USD để đáp ứng Basel III 72
Theo Fitch, 29 nhà băng số 1 thế giới sẽ phải tăng tỷ lệ vốn lõi lên 9,5% 72
List of figures
Figure 1: Translation procedures for translating Finance and banking terminology 15Figure 2: Translation procedures for translating proper names 19Figure 3: Translation procedures for translating acronyms 22Figure 4: Translation methods for translating news headlines 26
Trang 5
List of abbreviations
SLT Source language text
TLT Target language text
Trang 6CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale
The world that we are living has entered an era of globalization where almost all countries and economies are connected together in a particular way Every change in a country exerts an effect on others In such a condition, timely information or news plays increasingly momentous role in the development of an economy
In finance and banking area, where monetary policies of a nation change every year, exchange rates fluctuate every day and stock prices tend to be volatile every second, news is crucial Accordingly, translation of financial and banking news from English (major source language of information) into Vietnamese requiring not only timeliness but also accuracy has become essential for Vietnam’s economy to keep pace with the development of the global economy
Recently, in the context of economic crisis, finance and banking has not only been an area seriously suffered from the depression, but also an effective key for economic recovery These days, some of the most burning issues on media have been public debt, monetary reform and restructuring banking system It is especially critical for those who work in finance and banking field to constantly update information of national and international changes Once again, the importance of translating finance and banking news is emphasized
As a senior student of double major English – Finance and banking, the researcher has been equipped with background knowledge of economics in general as well as finance and banking in particular Thus, it is interesting and useful for her to
conduct a study called translation procedures, methods and strategies applied in
English – Vietnamese translation of finance and banking news in the hope to identify
appropriate strategies for translating financial and banking news Moreover, on
Trang 7carrying out this paper, the author also aspires to broaden background knowledge of her major and have a chance to practice translation skills
1.2 Significance of the study
For other students, the research was aimed at providing them with theoretical background in translation and translating finance and banking news Moreover, there were some suggestions for further studies, which may be useful for them afterwards
With regard to other readers, especially those who were interested in finance and banking field, the researcher hoped to help them have an in-depth look into methods and procedures of translating finance and banking news and strategies to cope with difficult situations
1.3 Aims of the study
The main aim of the study is to conduct an investigation into the English – Vietnamese translation of financial and banking news on some of online newspapers in Vietnam majoring in finance and banking in order to:
• Identify translation methods and procedures applied in translating financial and banking news
• Find out the most frequently used method and procedures
• Give some suggestions for financial and banking news translation strategies
The above objectives were satisfied on seeking for the answers of following questions:
• What are translation methods and translation procedures applied for finance and banking news translation?
Trang 8• Which methods and procedures are the most frequently used in finance and banking news translation?
• What are translation strategies to deal with difficult situations in finance and banking news translation?
Trang 9CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Translation
2.1.1 Definition of translation
Documentary evidence of translation can be traced back for at least two millennia and the present day international communication depends heavily on it However, there are still various definitions of translation
According to Dubois (1973) “translation is the expression in another language (TL) of what has been expressed in another (SL), preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences”
Similarly, Peter Newmark (1988) defined translation as “rendering the meaning
of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text”
Concerning with equivalent in translation, Hartman and Stork (1972) explained that “translation is the replacement of a representation of a text in one language by a representation of an equivalent text in a second language” The aim of translation is to accurately retain grammatical and lexical features as well as the factual information of the original by seeking equivalent in the TL
In short, it seems that the above researchers shared the same point of view when focusing on the requirement that the content and style of the original text (SLT) should
be preserved as far as possible in the translated text (TLT)
2.1.2 Translation Methods
As mentioned, controversy has arisen among researchers about the definition of translation and also, methods of translation have been of no exception Newmark (1988) provided eight main methods of translation
Trang 10SL TL
Word-for-word translation
In this translation method, the SL word order is preserved and the words translated singly by their most common meanings, out of context Cultural words are translated literally The main use of word-for-word translation is either to understand the mechanics of the source language or to construe a difficult text as a pre-translation process
Literal translation
The characteristic of literal translation is that the SL grammatical constructions are conveyed to their nearest TL equivalents but the lexical words are again translated singly, out of context As pre-translation process, this indicates the problem to be solved
Faithful translation
Faithful translation attempts to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the original within the constraints of the TL grammatical structure It transfers the cultural words and preserves the degree of grammatical and lexical “abnormality” (derivation from the SL norms) in the translation It attempts to be completely faithful to the intentions and the text realization of the SL writer
Semantic translation
Adaptation Free translation Idiomatic translation Communicative translation Semantic translation
Faithful translation
Literal translation
Word for word translation
Trang 11This method differs from faithful translation only in as far as it must take more account of the aesthetic value (that is, the beautiful and the natural sound) of the SL text While faithful translation is uncompromising and dogmatic, semantic translation appears to be more flexible It translates less important cultural words by culturally neutral third or functional terms but not by cultural equivalents and it makes other small concession to the readership
Idiomatic translation
This method produces the message of the original but tends to distort nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialism and idioms where there do not exist in the original As a result, the translated version is lively and natural
Communicative translation
The effectiveness of a text is given priority in this method as it attempts to render exact contextual meaning of the original in such a way that both content and language are readily acceptable and comprehensible to the readership
Among eight translation methods presented, semantic and communicative are two basic approaches in translation because they fulfill two main aims of translations: accuracy and economy Semantic is more economical, written at writer’s linguistic level while communicative at readership’s However, two methods treat the following items similarly: stock and dead metaphor, normal collocations, technical terms, slang, colloquialism, standard notices, ordinary languages
Trang 122.1.3 Translation procedures
According to Peter Newmark (1998), while translation method involves the whole text, translation procedure is used for sentence and smaller units of language In the book “A Text Book of Translation”, he mentioned a number of translation procedures However, the main ones were transference, naturalization, through translation, shift or transposition, modulation, cultural equivalent, functional equivalent, and descriptive equivalent
Transference
Transference or loan word or transcription is a procedure in which a SL word or expression is directly taken into TL with no translation This procedure is usually applied for proper names or new technical terms that do not have equivalent in TL
Shift or transposition
This procedure involves a change in the grammar or part of speech of a word or expression from SL to TL
Modulation
Modulation means a variation in the message when it is translated into TL due
to a change in point of view Three main types of modulation are one part-another, passive-active and positive-double negative
Cultural equivalent
In cultural equivalent, a SL cultural word or expression is translated by a cultural word considered equivalent to it
Trang 13Functional equivalent
Functional equivalent is the using of cultural-free word or expression in a translation for a cultural word or expression in the SL
Descriptive equivalent
In this procedure, the meaning of a SL word is explained by several words
In addition to above 8 procedures, there is another should be mentioned which is
couplets
Couplet is the combination of two or more translation procedures for dealing
with a single problem, particularly with cultural words The most frequently used is transference mingled with a functional or cultural equivalent
2.2 News
2.2.1 Definition of news
It can be said that the concept of news is as old as human beings However, it is difficult to find a conventional definition for this term satisfying every journalist, sociologist, political scientist and recipient all over the world
In the article, “The term news – its concept and definition in Anglo – Saxon tradition”, Marek listed a number of different definitions of the term news provided by many researchers in different fields of study in various periods of time Among them, the following of Melvin de Fleur and Everette Dennis in their book “Understanding mass communication” should be the most commonplace one: “news is current or fresh knowledge about an event that is gathered, processed and disseminated via medium to
a significant number of interested people”
Phillip H Ault and Edwin Emery also shared the same opinion when defining news as follows:
Trang 14News is a report of an event, containing timely (or at least hitherto unknown) information which has been accurately gathered and written by trained reports for the purpose of serving the reader, listener of viewer
Similarly, but putting more emphasis on the significance of news, Charnley (1993) asserted in his book “Reporting” that:
News is the current information made available to the public about what is going on – information often of vital importance to men and women trying to make up their minds about what to think and how to act News is timely concise, accurate report of an event: it is not the event itself
In a word, to be considered news, a piece of information must not be previously known, be delivered by mass media and have some effect on readers Hence, in the world of on-going changes, news as defined above has been playing increasingly important part in people’s life
2.2.2 Types of news
Bell (1991) devided press news into four categories namely hard news, feature articles (a small case of soft news), special topics e.g sport, business or financial, etc., and headlines (crossheads subheadings, bylines, photo captions) However, according
to Handbook of Independent Journalism, published by U.S Department of State in
2006, news can be grouped into two main types which are hard news and soft news with slight difference
Hard news or spot news, breaking news refers to factual, timely stories of
important events of almost every aspect of life ranging from politics, economics to society For the purpose of helping readers to get the information as quickly as possible, hard news is usually written in a distinctive style
Trang 15In contrast, soft news is not time-bound to immediacy and appears in longer
articles to provide readers with background information of human-interest topics e.g arts, entertainment and lifestyle In terms of writing style, soft news writers usually beat around the bush before getting to the central point and include their personal opinions in the news
2.2.3 Characteristics of news
Although researchers have not come to an agreement on the definition of the term news, the features of news they have given seem to be in common According to The University of Vermont Journalism Blog, news has six main characteristics: Timeliness, Impact, Proximity, Controversy (or Conflict), Prominence and Oddity
Timeliness
This is one of the most important characteristics of news clearly reflected in its definition As a matter of fact, journalists always stress current information and try to report it ahead their competitors Nevertheless, timeliness of news depends on its types
of publication such as a weekly newspaper or daily newspaper
Impact
It can be said that “if it affects reader - physically or emotionally - it might be news” To be more specific, the news that has deeper impacts on larger number of people all over the world is worthier breaking the news than others
Proximity
Another deciding factor of news is proximity which means that news should report events happening in the place where readers feel connect to rather than some faraway places The distance examined can be physical or psychological
Controversy (or Conflict)
A topic that is being argued is more newsworthy that the one that is already agreed Psychologically, controversies are favor of most people and the more tensions
a conflict between subjects, the more interesting and dramatic the news would become
Trang 16The event that involves someone whose name or job is well known (such as the President of the U.S) and easily recognized by the public is more likely to be interest of readers
Oddity
As people tend to be struck by extraordinary things, unexpected or unusual event, conflicts or controversies, drama or change are more newsworthy than the commonplace The news of this characteristic belongs to the “soft news” type since it
is produced with the aim of satisfying people’s interest and curiosity
2.3 Business news, finance and banking news
2.3.1 Business news
Business news reports events of business activity – an important aspect that directly affects human’s life and attracts their interest For a long time, this type of news has become an indispensible part of newspapers or even the main content of many well-known journals and newspapers such as the Journal Business News (nebusiness.co.uk) and the Wall Street Journal (online.wsj.com) It has been also much easier to get access to business news via the mass media, especially by using the Internet thanks to the development of technology
2.3.2 Finance and banking news
Finance and banking is a special activity of the economy which has an enormous influence on other activities and aspects of human life As a result, finance and banking news accounts for a considerable proportion of newspapers
Translation of financial news, as translation of other field, relates to conveying information and the author’s intention from the SLT to readers of the TL Micheal
Trang 17Donald, in “Financial news and press” (1999) regarded translation of financial news as
“rendering news or events in finance from a foreign language into another, keeping full intention of author and informative capacity” This kind of news-translation can be classified into two major groups which are general economic translation and financial translation The formal often deals with the economy at macro and micro level while the latter concerns daily news relating to the financial market (including commodities, money, banking, stock, etc.)
Trang 18CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
3.1 Sampling
The sample selecting process took place in two main stages which were randomly picking up translated news from Vietnamese online newspapers and looking for its source in English
At the first stage, thirty articles of Vietnamese news on finance and banking were collected from some of popular online newspapers majoring in economics in general, finance and banking in particular For example, some of the pieces of news were from famous business newspapers such as vneconomy.com, tinkinhte.com, tapchikinhtedubao.mpi.gov.vn, thesaigontimes.vn ( Thời báo Kinh Tế Sài Gòn Online), stockbiz.vn, infotv.vn etc With those websites, the writer had to find news in the finance and banking or global category On the other hand, with websites specializing
in finance and banking area such as taichinhdientu.vn, ebank.vnexpress.net, it was easier to obtain suitable news The reason why the writer chose those online newspapers was that they were prestige news sources leading in providing information about economy nation-wide and followed by a large number of readers Moreover, they were contributed by the work of skilled and knowledgeable journalists as well as translators
After that, the English versions or the sources of those articles were carefully searched in well-known English online newspapers: cnbc.com, ft.com, businessinsider.com, financialexpress.com, online.wsj.com, etc
3.2 Data analysis instruments
The primary instrument applied in this research was content analysis method Basing on Newmark’s theories of translation methods and translation procedures, the data were analyzed to find out the answer to the research questions
Trang 193.3 Data analysis procedure
Firstly, as the main aim of the research was to point out which translation procedures and translation methods utilized in translating finance and banking news from English to Vietnamese and which one is the most frequently used, the qualitative method was applied The data collected were analyzed in three ascending levels: word level, sentence level and text level
At the lowest level, the researcher worked with small units such as terminologies, acronyms and proper names in each text in the light of Newmark’s theory on translation procedures Before analyzing, those units in English and its equivalents in Vietnamese were put into separate column so that the analysis could be made easier
At the next level – sentence, some typical structures were examined to find out the translation procedures applied when translating them Moreover, changes when translating sentences such as sentence splitting or information order were also taken into account
At the highest level, the text was reviewed as a whole in terms of translation method The writer only focused on two main methods which were semantic and communicative method (two major approaches in translation)
With regard to headline, because it often served the most important function in a piece of news and had unusual structure, headline was considered a special unit in this research and studies separately
Secondly, after finding out procedures and methods employed in translating different units of the text, quantitative method was used to make conclusion on the frequency of those procedures and methods
Thirdly, an overall conclusion was made as an answer for all research questions Besides, some application of the result was drawn out in translating finance and banking news as well as in translating business news
Trang 20CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter includes findings after all the news collected was carefully examined at three levels: word level, sentence level and text level respectively In terms of word level, three following kind of words and phrases were picked up: terminology, proper names and acronyms to study their translation procedures Headlines were exceptional case and separately studied due to its special features
4.1 Translation procedures at word-level
4.1.1 Translation procedures for translating Finance and banking terminology
In Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary, terminology has two fold meaning On the one hand, it is a set of technical words or expressions used in a particular subject
On the other hand, it contains words used with particular meanings
According to Sager (1990) (in Vu Van Duy, 2012), terminology “refers deliberately to specific concepts within particular subject fields and therefore constitute
a sub-system of knowledge” such as medical terminology, scientific terminology etc Unlike general language word, terminology usually has one specific meaning in a particular field and thus requires reader background knowledge to understand and translate it correctly
It can be said that a variety of translation procedures were employed to translate terminology in collected finance and banking news samples Among them, literal translation was frequently used the most, followed by shift translation Functional equivalent procedure ranked third in frequency Other procedures such as descriptive equivalent and naturalization were accounted for the same small proportion Especially, modulation was used only once Detail about usage proportion of each translation procedure were presented in the below pie chart
Trang 21Figure 1: Translation procedures for translating Finance and banking
Take the term “appreciate’ for an example Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary presents four different meaning of this word such as recognize the good qualities of somebody of something, to increase in value over a period of time, etc However, in the context of “…high growth rates and appreciating currencies”, the
second meaning suited the best and the term was correctly translated as “tăng giá trị” Some other example of literal translation were “credit” rendered as “tín dụng”,
“deposit” as “tiền gửi”, “index” as “chỉ số” etc.
Phrases with at least two words were also handled by this procedure in which the meaning of the phrase was the combination of literal meaning of its word components After being literally translated, the meanings of each word were adapted
Trang 22to word order’s rules in Vietnamese One of the typical examples for this case was noun phrases because of the difference in components of a noun phrase order in English and that in Vietnamese In English, the noun which carries the main information of a phrase (called head noun) is usually located at the end of the phrase, other components which play a role of modifier such as adjective or another noun stand in front of the head noun For example, in the noun phrase “an extremely beautiful vintage house”, the head noun is “house” whereas the adverb “extremely”, adjective “beautiful” and noun “vintage” are modifiers for the main noun This phrase
is translated into Vietnamese as “một ngôi nhà theo lối cổ điển tuyệt đẹp” In this phrase, the main noun is located at the beginning of the phrase and other modifiers follow it
In translating finance and banking terminology, for instance, “capital market” and “government bond market” were translated as “thị trường vốn” and “thị trường
trái phiếu chính phủ”, respectively As can be seen from those Vietnamese equivalents,
each word in English term was literally translated and then rearranged so that the Vietnamese terms became suitable with Vietnamese word structure and understandable
to readers
Shift translation
Shift translation or transposition is the only translation procedure to concern with grammar There are many types of transposition classified by Peter Newmark ranging from changing from singular to plural to converting complex sentence in SL into simple sentence in TL In sample collected, the type of shift translation was the one involving a change in the part of speech SL to TL Words could be changed from
noun to verb or adjective and vice versa For instance, the term “bankruptcy” which
was a noun referred to the state of a person who has been declared by the court that not
to be capable of paying his or her debts and whose affairs are put into hands of a receiver (according to Dictionary of Banking and Finance), was considered equivalent
Trang 23of the verb “vỡ nợ” in Vietnamese A similar pattern was noticed when “devaluation” was translated into “phá giá tiền tệ” and “bond rating” into “đánh giá tín dụng của trái
phiếu” In those examples, the translators also added some information to make the
terms clearer and more understandable such as adding “tiền tệ” or “tín dụng”.
Another procedure used for translating currency was descriptive equivalent
“Dollar” was replaced by “đồng bạc xanh” in the target text due to the feature of dollar
paper was its green color Descriptive equivalent also seemed to be effective to
translate term that does not have equivalent in target language The term “go-shop
period” was handled by the combination of transference and descriptive equivalent
(couplet) as follows: “giai đoạn “go-shop” (tức khoảng thời gian để một công ty đại
chúng tìm giá chào tốt hơn sau khi nhận được một chào mua chính thức)”, so that
readers can have complete awareness of the term
With term that was new but widely recognized as “Abenomics”, the solution
was to use functional equivalent in which the term’s meaning was explained by cultural-free words According to www.lexicon.ft.com, a prestige economic website,
“Abenomics” refers to “a suite of measures introduced by Japanese prime minister
Shinzo Abe after his December 2012 re-election to the post he last held in 2007” In
Vietnamese version, this term was rendered as “chính sách của Thủ tướng Abe”
The last procedure was transference in which the source word was directly taken into the target text without translation The only term translated by this procedure was
“AAA” which is a familiar term in securities market given by Standard & Poor’s or by
Moody’s, indicating very high level of reliability for corporate or municipal bond in
Trang 24the US Because of its popularity, the translator assumed that readers already know the term and use this procedure for translating it
4.1.2 Translation procedures for translating proper names
Figure 2: Translation procedures for translating proper names
Proper names was defined by Newmark in his book “Approaches to translation”
as words “refers to persons, objects or processes peculiar to a single ethnic community” and have single references Usually, proper names are written with a capital letter
In collecting proper names from the samples to build up the database, the author only paid attention to names of organizations, programs, countries The reason why proper name of people was not considered in the thesis was that all of them were totally rendered with no translation
Shift translation, through translation, and transference were three procedures applied most in translating proper names In contrast, there were few cases handled by literal, modulation and descriptive equivalent The rest were translated by other procedures Specific cases with illustrative examples were presented as follows
Trang 25Through translation was the main procedure to work with already recognized terms such as name of international organizations, name of programs, and national organizations Followings are some examples of proper names handled by through translation in terms of international institutions:
- ASEAN Free Trade Area - Khu vực Thương Mại Tự do ASEAN
- Asian Development Bank (ADB) - Ngân hàng Phát triển châu Á (ADB)
- European Commission - Ủy ban châu Âu
Or national organizations and programs as follow
- Industrial Commercial Bank of China - Ngân hàng Công Thương Trung
Quốc (ICBC)
- China Banking Regulatory Commission - Ủy ban Điều tiết Ngân hàng
Trung Quốc
- Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership - Hiệp định Đối tác
Kinh tế Toàn diện Khu vực
- Trans Pacific Partnership - Hiệp định Đối tác Kinh tế xuyên Thái Bình
However, there were some words or expressions which had its meaning varied
in different countries due to differences in culture and political regime As a result, it was hardly possible for other procedures but cultural equivalent to solve the problem
For instance, the same term “parliament” was translated differently in “Cyprus
Parliament” - “Quốc hội Síp” and “EU Parliament” – “Nghị viện châu Âu” Another
Trang 26example was a situation in which two different proper names in two separate countries
had the same nature, so they had similar equivalent in Vietnamese They were “Bank
of Isreal” – “Ngân hàng Trung ương Isaeal” và “People Bank of China” – “Ngân hàng Trung ương Trung Quốc” The reason for this translation was that China is a People’s
Republic nation, which meant that all government’s institutions also belonged to people and people’s bank was central bank In contrast, in republic nations, their
central banks was named as bank of the nation such as “Bank of Isreal”, “Bank of
Japan”, “Bank of Canada” Differences in the way government’s agencies were named
and their head’s titles were also a case requiring cultural equivalent For example, when translating the title “Chancellor Georger Osbone”, it was really confusing if the translator rendered the title only, due to the different way of naming position in the
government of each country “Chancellor” in Germany is equivalent to “Prime
minister” in Vietnam; however in England, “Chancellor” which has the full form as
“Chancellor of the Exchequer” refers to the “Financial minister” As a result, the
translator needed to have understanding about those differences to transmit the information correctly
In translating name of the countries, two main procedures were applied which were naturalization and transference Naturalization was used for countries’ name that
had few syllables and nearly identical morpheme as in Vietnamese such as Hongkong and Thailand while many syllables name with unfamiliar morphemes was usually transferred (Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore) Transference was also a translation
procedure for proper names which contained people’s name or easily caused confusion
if literally translated In those cases, the translator added information about the general
type of proper name for readers to follow For example, “Dodd-Frank Act” was translated as “Đạo Luật Dodd-Frank” or “Asia Bond Monitor” as “Báo cáo Asia Bond
Monitor”.
Trang 274.1.3 Translation procedures for translating acronyms
Figure 3: Translation procedures for translating acronyms
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, acronym is a word formed by the initial letters of the words that make up the name of something For example, WTO is made up from first letters of the following words World Trade Organization
There were only three procedures used for translating acronyms in the samples examined A half of those acronyms were through translated, some were transferred and the rest was literally translated
Through translation was considered the most popular procedure to deal with acronyms The procedure was employed when the acronyms were quite widely-known
to the readership of the target language and sometimes they were transferred without
creating any trouble for reader to understand Some examples were EU – “Liên minh
châu Âu EU” and WB – “Ngân hàng Thế giới (WB)”
Another procedure in translating acronyms was transference For such frequently used acronyms as ATM and ASEAN, there was no need to clarify the meaning or function of those acronyms to avoid lengthy and unnecessary expressions such as “máy rút tiền tự động (ATM)” or “Hiệp hội các quốc gia Đông Nam Á (ASEAN)”
With less popular acronyms such as MEPs which stands for Members of European Commission Parliament, it was essential for the translator to give a full
Trang 28meaning of the whole phrase As a result, shift translation was employed and the acronym was translated as “Các thành viên trong Nghị viện Châu Âu (MEP)”
4.2 Translation strategies at sentence-level
At this level, the research aimed at making investigation into striking strategies
in translating difficult structures, sentences or a group of sentences in Finance and banking news The author did not study procedures applied in translating sentences because it was impossible to examine and collect statistics of every sentence in each piece of news
One of the noticeable features in translating a text from English into Vietnamese should be mentioned first was the use of passive and active voice In English, it is more formal for people to use passive sentences instead of active ones, which contrasts to Vietnamese style Therefore, passive voice in original versions should be changed into active voice in translated versions in Vietnamese With sentences which have no subject or “empty it” as a subject, translators should give them suitable subjects to turn them into active sentences Below are some examples extracted from collected samples:
The EU's bailouts other nations in the last three years, such as Greece and Portugal, have usually been accompanied with strict budget restrictions and led to big losses for bond holders.
Đối với các quốc gia khác trong 3 năm qua, như Hy Lạp hay Bồ Đào Nha, cơ quan này chỉ đòi hỏi thắt chặt ngân sách.
In this example, structure in the translated sentence was converted into an active sentence by changing the subject of the sentence Example of translating of sentence with “empty it” can be seen as followed
It was the collapse of the dollar in the 1970s that led to the establishment of the Gold Commission.
Trang 29Đồng bạc xanh sụp đổ trong những năm 1970 chính là nguyên nhân dẫn đến sự
ra đời của Ủy ban vàng.
Besides, due to the differences in perspective of English and Vietnamese people, translators applied modulation procedures to make the translated versions sound more nature in target language For example,
Over time, value flowed back into the dollar, which had soared to a 265th of an ounce of gold on the day George W Bush was sworn in as president in January 2001.
Qua thời gian, đồng USD tăng giá lên mức 1/265 ounce vàng khi cựu Tổng thống George W Bush tuyên thệ tại Nhà Trắng hồi tháng 1/2001
If the translator used literal translation for the sentence, its meaning could be understood accurately but the sentence seemed to be unfamiliar to the Vietnamese way
of expression
Another commonplace procedure used in translating finance and banking news
at sentence level was shift translation Structural patterns were usually changed to make the translation become natural as Vietnamese way of expression The most frequently seen cases of shift translation were the change in part of speech of word such as noun into verb or adjective For example,
Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades tried to calm his nation on Sunday, and convince lawmakers to vote for the bailout plan, which includes the deposit tax."A disorderly bankruptcy would have forced us to leave the euro and forced a devaluation," he said in a speech.
Tổng thống Cộng hòa Síp Nicos Anastasiades đã cố trấn an người dân hôm Chủ Nhật và thuyết phục các nhà làm luật bỏ phiếu thông qua kế hoạch cứu trợ này Ông giải thích: "Vỡ nợ có thể buộc chúng ta từ bỏ đồng euro và phá giá tiền tệ".
Or
The UK's net sovereign debt was the equivalent of 68% of the country's annual economic output, or GDP, at the end of last year.
Trang 30Hiện tại, nợ ròng của Anh tương đương với 68% sản lượng kinh tế hàng năm của cả nước, hay GDP, vào cuối năm ngoái.
Last but not least, while many English sentences tended to be long and complex with the combination of many clauses, Vietnamese versions were shorter because translators split a complicated sentence into some other sentences to make it less confusing to readers For instance,
The bailout, while small compared to the emergency loans supporting other troubled European nations like Greece, represents more than half the size of the €18 billion Cyprus economy.
So với các gói khẩn cấp mà các quốc gia trước như Hy Lạp, được nhận, gói cứu trợ có quy mô tương đối nhỏ Tuy nhiên, nó lại tương đương hơn một nửa nền kinh tế trị giá 18 tỷ euro của Cộng hòa Síp.
Similarly, in the below example, the original sentence was split into two separate sentences so that the information became clearer but the effect on readers which was emphasizing the less-than-usual value of breakup fee of the deal, was remained unchanged
The breakup fee of $180 million which Blackstone or Icahn would have to pay if they block the deal is half of the typical fee for a deal of this size, these people said
Sau khi gửi chào mua, nếu Blackstone và Icahn rút lại, sẽ mất 180 triệu USD phí bồi thường Với những vụ đầu tư lớn cỡ này, thường mức phí trên phải lớn gấp đôi
4.3 Translation methods for translating news headlines
News headlines were defined by Micheal Swan (1995: 359) (in Nguyen Thi Tuyen, 2012) as shorts titles above newspaper reports According to Van Dijk (1986) (in Phan Vu Thuy Trang, 2008), headline has the highest readership in the newspaper
Trang 31and it serves two main functions: summarizing the content of a story and arousing reader’s curiosity to entice them into reading the article
Many scholars considered news headline a difficult type of text due to its special features in vocabulary, language and style of writing As a result, students of English usually face obstacles in understanding news headlines’ meaning covered in its lexical, syntactic and rhetorical levels for its brevity, attractiveness and clarity (Danutar R., 1998) That was also the reason why headlines were categorized as independent unit and examined in the light of Peter Newmark’s theory of translation methods
In translating news headlines, the translators also use another method to satisfy criteria of attractiveness, conciseness and understandability They create a brand new headline for the article by using the most striking information in the text or the main idea of the whole text This method is used when the translators assume that the original headline does not have enough effects on their readers or it may be inappropriate to readership’s interest and background knowledge
After all fifteen news headlines in English were contrasted with their equivalents in Vietnamese to find out translation methods utilized, the proportion of those methods could be observed in the below pie chart
Figure 4: Translation methods for translating news headlines
As can easily be seen from the chart, communicative translation was chosen the most frequently by translators when they converted the news headlines into
Trang 32Vietnamese The reason for that was the effectiveness and readability that the communicative method gave priority to Thanks to the method, the meaning intended
by the writer was conveyed straight forward and readers saved time in getting the sense
of the headlines The next examples illustrated how the readers could benefit from the communicative translation method
With regard to effectiveness of the message to be communicated, “Blackstone
Group, Icahn said to submit proposals to Dell” can be taken as an example The
headline literally meant “Tập đoàn Blackstone và Icahn nói rằng họ đã nộp bản chào mua chính thức công ty máy tính Dell” This translation sound lengthy and unnatural; therefore, literal translation method seemed to be inapplicable because it would not attract readers’ attention The translator decided to use communicative method by
replacing the proper names “Blackstone Group, Icahn” by its superordinate
“speculator” – “các nhà đầu cơ” or “giới đầu cơ” In addition, in this situation the
phrase “to submit proposal” meant to give official offer to buy Obviously, two
companies desired to buy Dell and they had to compete with each other to win the deal
Then the Vietnamese version “Giới đầu cơ tranh giành hãng máy tính Dell” met the
requirements of effectively transmitted message and reader attraction
As mentioned, another advantage of communicative method was the readability
it brought to the translation which made the translation interesting and enjoyable to
read For example, if the headline “Indonesia’s economy to grow 6.2% in 2013: World
Bank” had been literally translated, the figure would not have created necessary
impression on those people who did not have background knowledge about Indonesia’s economic growth Instead, the translator compared this figure with the previous
forecast of World Bank to translate the headline as “WB hạ dự báo tăng trưởng kinh tế
của Indonesia” Apparently, this translated version provided readers with the central
idea of the article and became more captivating for them to continue reading to seek
detailed information about the news Similarly, in the headline “Goldman Sach raises
$1 billion selling stake in ICBC”, the author merely gave information in statistics
Trang 33without referring to any other information This headline was not impressive enough because Industrial Commercial Bank of China ICBC was a national bank of a country and did not have worldwide influence As a result, that an American multinational investment banking firm sold their stake in ICBC did not appeal to many readers It was clever of the translator to catch the main content of the article then replace the bank with a larger geography name of the market where the bank operated and revealed the purpose of the firm’s action The Vietnamese version of the news had the
headline as “Goldman Sach muốn thoái vốn khỏi Trung Quốc ”
Semantic translation, in contrast, gives greater focus on aesthetic features of the source language and closely renders metaphors, collocations, technical terms, unusual syntactic structures and collocations etc This method was applied when the translator encountered interesting but not too difficult for readers to understand collocation or
technical terms For instance, in the headline “UK loses top AAA rating for the first
time since 1978”, “AAA rating” was quite a familiar terminology in finance and
banking As a result, the translator used the equivalent terminology in Vietnamese in
the translation “Anh mất hạng tín dụng AAA lần đầu tiên”.
Sometimes, when the information in headlines was not familiar and noticeable enough for readers of target language, it would be replaced by other information from the article This method required translators a deep understanding about the news and their readers’ interest For example, at present, Cyprus’ crisis and EU’s bailout are one
of the hottest issues in economic conference and any information about those matters is closely followed by a number of readers all over the world All journalists tried to make their news as attractive as possible to readers It can be said that the Vietnamese version of “Đảo Síp châm ngòi cho cuộc chiến Nga-Đức?” was much more detailed and appealing than their original one of “How Russia could take revenge over Cyrus deal” because the main idea of the article about the Russian’s vengeance on the German
Trang 34In a word majority of the headlines were translated successfully into Vietnamese and satisfied requirements of effectiveness, readability and naturalness The translation methods dominated in translating finance and banking news headlines were addressed, which were communicative and semantic translation However, the writer also found some Vietnamese headlines which did not fully convey the intention
of the news’ author For instance, the headline “Dollar is the only serious reserve
player” was rendered as “Người ta vẫn sẽ dự trữ Đô la Mỹ” so that readers were only
informed that dollar was still being kept as a reserve currency and it seemed that dollar had lost its top rank It was not until they read the body of the news that they realized despite many negative economic forecasts, dollar was still the most important international reverses currency There was no other currency which was strong enough
to take up dollar’s position Therefore, in the writer’s point of view, this English headline should have been translated into “Đô là vẫn là đồng tiền dự trữ số một”
4.4 Translation methods at text-level
It is conventionally accepted that semantic and communicative translation are the two main approaches in translation They are widely used in various types of text and also attract attention of many researchers That is the reason why Peter Newmark spent a chapter discussing about the two methods in his famous work “Approaches to translation”
According to Newmark, there are wide differences between semantic and communicative translation The most prominent distinction between them is that while semantic translation gives priority to the semantic and syntactic structures of the original, communicative translation tends to focus on the effect produced on TT readers Other differences between the two methods was summarized in the below table
Semantic translation Communicative
Trang 35translation Addressee focus Focus on thought-
process of the transmitter, assists the readers only in connotations if they consider
to be a significant message
of the text
Solely to TL reader , oriented toward a specific language and culture
original culture
Transfer foreign elements into TL’s culture and language
render as close as the semantic and syntactic structures and the exact contextual meaning of the ST
Writer’s message, produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers
of the original
Relation to ST Always inferior to
ST, loss of meaning
May be better than the
ST, gain of force and clarity even if loss of semantic contents
awkward, more detailed, more concentrated
Smoother, simpler, clearer, more direct, more conventional
Appropriatenes
s
Used for expressive texts such as serious literature, autobiography, important political (or other) statement
Used for informative texts such as non-literary writing, technical text, publicity, standardized types, popular fiction
Trang 36significance of ST message in TT
Communicative translation method
In presented theory, finance and banking news, as a type of informative text is translated mainly by communicative translation method Writer’s observation of this study’s samples also drew the same conclusion However, as in Newmark’s notice that
There is no one communication nor one semantic method of translating the text – there are in fact widely overlapping bands of methods A translation can be more, or less, semantic – more, or less communicative – even a particular section or sentence can be treated more communicatively or less semantically
apart from communicative method, semantic translation should also be taken into account when studying the translation method applied for translation finance and banking news
One indicator for communicative method used in the samples was the way translators reconstructed the information to best suit their readers’ level of interest The news was usually shortened to be more succinct and focused Occasionally, if necessary, the information in the article was reordered to be more logic and appealing
to Vietnamese readers This was due to the fact that the majority of news samples collected from online prestigious sources such as the Reuters or Bloomberg were timely updated news and full of detailed information and figures about the news’ topic Vietnamese readers, because of the geography distance and psychology of “outsiders”, may need only some key information without requiring too many details about it
Take the news “S&P 500 rebounds toward record on housing, orders data” for
an example In this article, the writer provided readers with a number of changes in stock prices in the US stock market Remarkable fluctuations in market prices of a
Trang 37variety of large companies and corporations’ share were mentioned including Monsanto Co., Boeing Co., Netflix, Pacific Crest Securities LLC, etc With stockbrokers and shareholders in the US, information about those companies was extremely helpful for them to make decision in selling and buying stock On the other hand, with oversea readers who did not hold the share or have interest in those companies, that kind of information could be of no use to them What they were really concerned with might be the performance of popular indexes such as the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average or stock prices of powerful multinational corporations such as Intel Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co (or HP) Having read the thoughts or her readers, the translator did not overwhelm them with all the information and statistics as in the original version, she only rendered information which attracted their attention
Example about information rearrangement was found in the article called
“Flows into Asia bond markets raise risk of asset price bubbles” Unlike in many
English versions studied as samples in the research where major information was located at the beginning of the text, then other information was presented to supplement the topic, translated samples in Vietnamese were usually written in inductive way To be specific, supplementary information was flexibly presented before or after the major one depending on features of specific cases so that readers could be clearly understand about the message that the writer wanted to convey In English text, the writer firstly mentioned recent context of emerging East Asia and its superior features over other areas which attracted capital inflows After that, the definition of “emerging East Asia” was provided which referred to some countries in the East and South East Asia area The reason for this was that English readers might
be familiar with the term so that the writer decided to start the news with the most striking information Obviously, it would have been more logical if readers had been given the definition of a term before information related to it was shown Therefore,
Trang 38the new information order as in Vietnamese version was appropriate to the target language readers
A clearer example of information rearrangement can be found in beginning part
the article called “A commission for the Fed’s next 100 years” The SLT started with a
brief description about a new bill which was the center of monetary reform of the US and the bill’s main functions Then, the establishment of Fed was mentioned because the bill reminded people of the monetary commission that led to Fed’s creation In the TLT; however, the information was presented in chronological order from the establishment of Fed to the introduction of the new bill This approach seemed to be more appropriate to foreign readers who might not know the history of Fed
As the Federal Reserve approaches its 100th anniversary in December, the focus of monetary reform centers on a bill called the Centennial Monetary Commission Act Introduced this month in the House of Representatives by Chairman
of the Joint Economic CommitteeKevin Brady, the bill would "establish a commission
to examine the United States monetary policy, evaluate alternative monetary regimes, and recommend a course for monetary policy going forward."
Mr Brady's bill is not the kind of direct attack on the Fed that has been launched by, say, Rep Ron Paul, who has called for eliminating the central bank altogether But the bill—noting that a National Monetary Commission, established after the panic of 1907, led to the Fed's creation on Dec 23, 1913—would set up a new commission at the start of the Fed's second century
(A commission for the Fed’s next 100 years – Online.wsj.com)
Cách đây 100 năm, vào ngày 23/12/1913, Ủy ban tiền tệ quốc gia đã quyết định thành lập Fed sau tình trạng hoảng loạn của năm 1907 Trong khi Cục dự trữ liên bang Mỹ (Fed) sẽ tròn 100 tuổi vào tháng 12 tới, nỗ lực cải cách tiền tệ của nước Mỹ hiện đang tập trung vào dự luật có tên gọi Ủy ban tiền tệ thế kỷ Vừa được đề xuất